these are authors who have been in the business for a long time (some are successful and well-known in other genres), who know the self-pub industry well, and have figured out a way to monetize their product in an extreme way. They know the key ingredients to sell a book: genre-appropriate cover, good blurb, interesting sample, and customer reviews. The stories are common tropes, quick, easy, steamy reads, generally enjoyable. The content is minimally edited, but they don't care; they get those reviews up, sell a bundle in a week or two, and then abandon any promo on that book because the next one is ready to release. Books are unpublished, rewritten, and republished; the same stories are rotated as bonus material between the books. Most of the shenanigans teeter on the edge of Amazon's TOS.

When you consider it, it's a lot of work, fast turnaround, plenty of chances to screw up and high overheads with big rewards. Like a fast-food outlet compared to a standard-fare restaurant. Or a 'stack-em-high-sell-em-cheap' supermarket. Either way, they knock the competition on the head.

Bonus ContentIf you choose to include bonus content (e.g. other stories, or previews of other books), it should be relevant to the customer and should not disrupt the reading experience. To meet these guidelines, we recommend placing additional content at the end of the book.

Content must meet all program guidelines (e.g., bonus content in KDP Select titles must be exclusive). Translated content must be high quality and not machine generated. Disruptive links and promises of gifts or rewards are never allowed.

But I don't think it's helpful to accuse people of being 'scammers' or whatever when they are working within the very system Amazon created.

Yeah! that would be me and I admit I'm using a 'catchall' phrase because everyone seems to consider anyone bending the rules is taking advantage or 'scamming' the system. When I say 'scammers', I really mean 'lovely people with misguided views on being fair and considerate to others' all good ?

And none of my royalties are going to scammers or stuffers or botters... they all go into my pocket. I've said it before, on the direct side I think zon is running a good operation. On the KU side it's a total gong show.

Yep! I'm not exclusive with Amazon yet I get a good deal so long as I don't try and compete with those in KU. Should we demand a level-playing field?

I would agree with you except this is specifically against amazons own rules. Then they turn around and harass other authors for ridiculous things like reviews or demanding their copyright letters. They pick and choose which rules to follow and sorry, that isnít okay.

The point is by staying in KU you accept that you're a willing participant in this harassment. You become party to it and are therefore complicit. Writing emails to Amazon and making videos is all well and good, but in the end you all KNOW it's totally ineffective. If people really wanted to do something about it, they would leave KU in droves. I'm not unaware that people derive their income from this, but then so do workers in sweatshops in Pakistan. you don't dare risk being expelled, or worse killing the goose yet you realise someone somewhere has to ride to your aid. The bane of being an Indie is you're an army of one.

I've been using https://www.books2read.com (a D2D company) for some time, since it started, I guess. However, I've not really been paying it much attention, just using it now and again for promotions.Now that I've been keeping my books wide for a while it's proving quite useful to have all my own books2read custom link e.g. https://

books2read.com/rigelian-gambit. The beauty is that when you populate the link with all of the platforms that carry your books, the reader ends up with a one-click, multi-choice all in one place. When the reader then selects their favoured sales platform, the B2R link offers to save that so that when using the link (for any book on the B2R link) the user goes immediately to the book without the intervening B2R landing page. An added bonus is being able to add your affiliate link for all the major platforms and so gain that little extra income off your sales.

Read the FAQ's for interesting work-around add-on's to avoid falling foul of anti-affiliate requirements of some sites.

Its an outdated concept that if we all got what we thought we deserved, we'd get it all, if we all got what everyone else thought we should have, we'd get nothing.

Reality is a harsh employer. You have to fight for what you can get, but whingeing never made anyone any money. It seems to me that there are some very clever people out there fighting for their share (and getting it in spades). What they can do - you can do - and if Amazon isn't doing nowt about them, they probably won't do anything about you either. As long as the reader ends up with a smile on their face while paying Amazon their monthly tithe nobody is going to rock the boat. No, I wouldn't do it, but then I refuse to belong to KU [any more] because it's a scam and the author is the victim. The responsible and best way to get even with Amazon, is to keep your books wide and support their competitors wherever you can. One day KU will collapse and if you're in there dependant on their handouts, then you will be the loser and Amazon and the scammers will not twitch a muscle to help you.

The answer is to not play Amazon's game. Leave KU to the page stuffers and scammers. If Amazon won't do anything about it then it's up to you to deal with it yourselves. They're saying it's not a problem, but if all the genuine authors leave KU because of the inherent unfairness of the system, then Amazon has to either deal with the issue, or continue to ignore it. If the readers complained about page stuffing, then Amazon would deal with it - but they don't and probably won't.

Honestly, this chestnut has been roasted so many times it's wizened and dry as a bone.

and from my point of view (from outside KU) the reader isn't getting a bad deal and there's little difference between calling it a boxset and having the pages stuffed. The reader gets a great VFM deal either way. The problem is purely using the links to jump from one end of the book to the other. Something anyone can do with any book at any time. The system's broken - so why continue to use it?

I think I'd be extremely worried having a program that wasn't under my personal control, i.e. on my laptop. I keep all my files in the 'cloud', but I've never liked subscription models because you end up paying considerably more for your software that way. Yes, you have programming ongoing, but you get that in updates to a software program that you purchase for your personal use. As it is I use Jutoh and Writer's Cafe, both produced by Anthemion. The latter is an excellent nuts&bolts scrivener. You might want to look at it as a more secure alternative to your browser-based software.

My new novel is available for pre-order now for distribution on the 10th January on all platforms (Amazon, Kobo, B&N Nook, Google, Apple iTunes, etc.,)

Dirk is young but expertly trained on his father's private estate. When he 'sniffs out' his parent's assassin his immediate desire for revenge throws him deep into a plot to take over the lucrative clone industry. When Dirk discovers aliens are involved the fight quickly escalates into an action-packed battle for political control of Capella. His only weapon is the mysterious 'Rigelian Gambit', but can Dirk work out exactly what it is and, more importantly how to use it before time runs out.

Not really, Amazon prefers that you exclude the cover whereas if you don't include your cover on D2D the reader doesn't get it. I guess Amazon will strip it out if you leave it in, so it 'probably' doesn't matter much either way.

Actually I think you can come to a fair deal. He needs to learn to narrate and you don't (obviously) want to pay a lot for what might turn out to be a poor narration. So, why not let him do this for you on the basis of paying him a commercial rate if it is successfully well received. Whilst people will quote you what 'they' pay their narrators, they are talking about people who have developed their craft and command a price in the market. You friend needs some experience before he can do the same. I'm sure a rate of $75-$100 per finished hour would make both of you feel as though you were getting a great deal out of it. The test is the feedback you get from the listeners. Put a few chapters out on Reddit in their audiobook section and wait for the critiques (they're exceptionally good at giving people honest feedback). Then base your final fee on the result.

I had an issue with the spelling of the narrator. It took two go's for them to address it, but it was fixed within a week of asking. I used this email: support@acx.com and it took about another week to permeate through the Audible and Amazon platforms. You might need to point out to them that it's the physical categories on the sites and NOT the metadata that they're looking at.

However, if anyone is any doubt - this lady wants people to pay shelf space to cover the rent on her unit. The picture of the retail layout points clearly to someone who isn't commercially minded and whilst the concepts are there, the knowledge and experience to put them into effect clearly isn't.

Use Link-Maker to include Amazon links (pictures or text) in your post!

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